You Don't Know You're Beautiful
by Sheyrena Wyrsabane
Summary: Darcy is assigned to help Bruce adjust to living among other people - getting him comfortable with human interaction like talking to other people and casual touches. Just some Bruce/Darcy fluff.


"He's never had a normal life," Tony tells Darcy as they look at Bruce working through one of the many video feeds Tony has. Darcy makes a mental note never to do anything in Stark Tower that would be embarrassing for anyone else to see. She then scratches out that mental note, because that will never happen. She makes a new mental note, this one to work on having absolutely no shame so she can be herself in the Tower.

"Have any of us?" Darcy asks. "Normal is relative, and now that our lives are full of gods and legends and geniuses and spies what is normal?"

Tony grins and wraps an arm around Darcy's shoulders. "You're going to be perfect. Just don't be awkward."

Darcy laughs. "Clearly you don't know me at all."

* * *

Darcy doesn't have much to do now that Jane has a real team of scientists working with her so when Tony asked her to help Bruce adjust to life among other people she'd jumped at the opportunity to do something.

"I'm helping you adjust to your new life," Darcy announces the first time she appears in Bruce's labs. She's sure that somewhere, someone in SHEILD is watching the surveillance and face palming, because she was told to keep this mission covert, but she doesn't believe in lying. About serious things. Will she lie about who ate Thor's last Pop-Tart or hid Jane's little black book of secrets? Yeah she will. Will she lie about important things? Nope. If SHIELD did their homework then they'd know that.

Bruce looks up from his microscope, a red ring around one eye from where it had been pressing against the lens. The first few buttons of his shirt are undone and she can see the little curls of chest hair poking out. Those are nothing compared to the gorgeous curls of hair on top of his head, and Darcy suddenly has the urge to pat him on the head or run her fingers through his hair, but this is their first meeting, and she doesn't want to creep him out too badly. There will be time for petting later.

"Uh what?"

Darcy flashes a brilliant smile. "I'm Darcy. I heard you didn't have the most stable life before coming here so I'm supposed to, I dunno, help you settle in or something?" She shrugs. "All I really know is that I'm being paid to spend time with you, and since I was out of a job I figured it wouldn't be too bad."

Bruce blinks at her. "You're being paid to babysit me?"

"Eh." Darcy waves a hand. "That's such a patronizing word, don't you think? I'm here to keep you company, make sure you eat—it's lunch time by the way, that's why I came down here."

"You're not safe with me," Bruce says. "The Hulk could pulverize you. There have to be better ways to make money."

"What's life without a little adventure?" Darcy asks. "Besides, I'm the gal who tazed Thor. If Mr. Grumpy Pants gives me any trouble, I'll just taze him."

"Mr. Grumpy Pants?" Bruce echoes. "That's why you're calling the Hulk?"

Darcy grins. "So, where do you want to go for lunch?"

Bruce gets so caught up in the whirlwind that is Darcy, he forgets to protest and finds himself being dragged out of his lab. Her fingers lace through his, and her palm is warm against his sweaty one, and she smiles up at him, rendering him speechless.

* * *

Darcy drapes her arms over Bruce's shoulders and rests her head on his back. He's going to protest, because he's actually trying to work, and he doesn't really like being touched, but then her fingers undo the first few buttons of his shirt so they can work their way through his chest hair.

"You should wear your shirts like this more often," Darcy says, weaving her fingers through the short, curly hairs. "It's rugged. Sexy."

Bruce pulls her hands off him. "You're delusional."

"Been called worse," she says. "But really, we need to work on this touching thing. Normal people touch each other."

Bruce carefully keeps his eyes on the diagrams in front of him, because he knows he's blushing right now, and he doesn't want her to see him blushing over her words like he's a middle school boy.

"Did Tony put you up to this?" Bruce asks because he can't think of any other reason why she's down here every day to pester him with stupid jokes or little smiles or even to just sit in the corner with a book so he's not alone in his lab.

"He was the one to suggest it," Darcy says, "and since he's a genius I genuinely agree with whatever he says."

"I don't want your pity," Bruce says.

"I'm not offering it. Look, you're fun to be around. You're cute and adorable and snuggable—you're a giant teddy bear!"

Bruce finally turns around, shock written on his every feature. "Did you just call me a teddy bear?"

Darcy grins and slides forward so she can pinch one of his cheeks. "Can I call you Mr. Snuggles?"

"I will kill you before you can reach your tazer."

It was supposed to be threatening, but Darcy laughs and throws her arms around him in an entirely unexpected hug. "You just made a joke! About the Hulk. This calls for a celebration. Let's go to M&M World."

* * *

"Behold," Darcy says as Bruce looks up from his microscope, rubbing the sleep from his eyes.

Fury has him doing research on some disease they want a cure for "just in case" it gets loosed on the world, and he'd been working for hours now, and he's tired and cranky and not in the mood for Darcy's shenanigans right now.

She's standing before a science table of her own, an empty vial before her. In her right hand is a vial with a yellow liquid, in her right is one with a blue liquid.

"Science," she says once she realizes she has Bruce's attention. She pours the yellow and blue liquid into the third vial and they turn green as they mix. "I'm pretty much a genius. Took two things and made something new."

Bruce stares for a long moment, and he doesn't know if it's how tired he is or how she's managed to do that straight faced or what, but he starts laughing and doesn't stop until he's clutching his stomach and writhing on the floor.

Darcy grins, satisfied with herself.

She's even more pleased when, not even a half hour later, Bruce sees what he'd been missing and gets to work on a cure.

* * *

Bruce gets used to strange things happening in his lab now that he has almost permanent company. Darcy is quiet when he needs her to be, letting him work, but when she's decided that he's worked too much or need a break or she gets bored, she lets him know. Yesterday she'd left a trail of blueberries from his microscope to the table where she'd set up lunch for the two of them.

Two days ago she'd started what he's pretty sure is a reward system. Every time he does something she approves of—takes a five minute break for every hour he works, drinks water while he works to stay hydrated, leaves the first few buttons of his shirt undone—she gives him an M&M. When he does something she doesn't like—skips a meal, snaps at her for interrupting him, wears turtlenecks—she crosses her arms over her chest and pouts, and he is suddenly overcome with the feeling that he's a terrible person and does whatever she wants just to make that look go away.

None of that has prepared him for the sight before him right now. He can't sleep, because there's this problem he can't solve and maybe if he solves it he'll be able to sleep, so he went down to his labs only to find them occupied.

He stands in the doorway, shamelessly staring as Darcy dances around the room. A song he doesn't recognize is blaring, and she's twirling around, her hair flying in every direction as she shouts out the words.

"You're insecure, don't know what for," she says, throwing her arms over her head. It makes her sleep shirt ride up, and Bruce can see a flash of skin before he realizes that she's holding something in her hand. It looks like a carton of ice cream. He frowns, because what the hell is going on? Is he dreaming?

Darcy's pajama shorts are shorter than anything Bruce has seen in her before, and he slowly starts to back out of the lab, because it's inappropriate for him to be here.

"Baby you light up my world like nobody else," Darcy sings, using her ice cream container as a microphone. She pauses to scoop up some ice cream—with her finger, Bruce thinks cringing—before she's belting out lyrics again. "But when you smile at the ground it ain't hard to tell, you don't know, oh, oh, you don't know you're beautiful!"

She laughs and twirls around, freezing when she sees Bruce in the doorway. Her eyes go wide and she runs over to the CD player to hit pause. The music dies, leaving the lab in silence except for her breathing. Bruce tries not to stare at her chest as it rapidly rises and falls.

"Sorry," she says, tucking her hair behind her ear. "I, uh."

Bruce has never seen her like this—shy, vulnerable, uncertain—and he wishes he'd left before she'd noticed that he'd invaded her privacy.

"No, I'm sorry. I should've knocked." He takes a step back and hits the door frame. He cringes and tries to back out the doorway, and this has suddenly become a competition to see who can be the most awkward.

Darcy brushes her hair out of her face and holds out her ice cream. "You can join me."

She wants Bruce to sing? And to eat with his fingers? Did she know how unsanitary that is? He shudders at the thought.

"No, this is your time," he says. "I'll let you continue singing about whoever is on your mind."

Darcy's lips turn up in a breath taking smile. "He's a pretty incredible guy."

Bruce ignores the way his stomach sinks. She deserves someone incredible, and he wonders when she had time to meet him. It seems like she's always with him in his lab or dragging him to lunch or attempting to cook dinner for the two of them. Is it someone else in SHIELD? He can't picture her with a government bureaucrat, but then again, he has trouble picturing her with him and here she is. She's a young woman full of surprises.

"Yes, well," Bruce nods. "I'll see you tomorrow."

She turns the music back on while he leaves, mouthing the words.

_If only you way what I can see  
You'll understand why I want you so desperately  
Right now I'm looking at you and I can't believe  
You don't know  
Oh oh  
You don't know you're beautiful_

* * *

The Hulk is lumbering around the battlefield, and no one can get him to change back, and no one wants to get too close to him to try and reason with him. The last time Tony tried, he'd been knocked fifty feet into the air.

"Should we just leave him?" Clint asks. "I mean, he has to calm down eventually, right?"

"He's a danger to himself and others," Steve says as the Hulk picks up a few dead bodies and tosses them aside. "We can't leave him until he's calmed down."

"He shouldn't have come on this mission," Natasha says, crossing her arms over her chest, wondering what the best approach to this situation is. Physical force won't get them anywhere and neither will appealing to whatever bit of Bruce is left in there. That doesn't leave her with many other options.

There had been a mild attack, one that didn't require the Hulk, but Bruce had come along, because he had wanted to help in some capacity, and he could treat the victims.

That plan worked well until someone attacked the medical 'copter. A bullet had grazed Bruce's arm and then the Hulk decided it was time for him to join the fun. Only now the fun was over, and the Hulk was still sticking around.

"You lot are pathetic," Darcy says, striding up to where the Avengers minus the Hulk are assembled, watching the Hulk with a wary eye. She pushes past them but Thor reaches out to grab her arm.

"You cannot approach him like this. You could get hurt."

"Someone has to and apparently the Earth's Mightiest Heroes aren't up for the job." She rips her arm free and goes out to meet the Hulk.

He spots her coming toward him and doesn't give her much of a thought. Instead, he picks up a few more limp bodies by the ankles and starts smashing them into the ground.

"Enough!" Darcy shouts, startling the Hulk into turning to look at her. She stares him down, hands on her hips. "The battle is over, in case you didn't notice."

The Hulk's shoulders raise in what she thinks might be a shrug. "Not done." He scoops up an abandoned gun and snaps it over his leg. "Not done." He reaches for another gun, and Darcy gets it.

"Hey," she says, taking a step closer and the Hulk pauses what he's doing. "They tried to hurt Bruce, and you protected him. I get it, but now it's my turn. I promise I'll take care of him."

The Hulk blinks, and a long moment stretches between them before he starts shrinking. Darcy grins as she sees the familiar brown curls but then her jaw drops, because Bruce is naked, and she hadn't been expecting that. She's heard that the pants didn't survive the transformation back to human though somehow they survived the transformation to the Hulk, and she'll puzzle that one out later when she's not confronted with a buck naked scientist.

"Oh wow," she says. What had she promised the Hulk? That she'd take care of Bruce? She grins and she bends down to try and pull a disoriented Dr. Banner to his feet. Oh, she'll take care of him all right.

"You're heavy," Darcy grunts, her quads burning as she tries to get Bruce standing. "You feel like helping out at all?"

"Did you just call me fat?" Bruce mumbles, his eyelids fluttering as he struggled to retain consciousness.

"Way to focus on the unimportant." Darcy wraps her arms around Bruce's waist, careful not to touch anything that will cause undue embarrassment, they are in public right now after all, and hefts him to his feet. "Also, you're not fat. Soft and warm, but not fat."

"Not a teddy bear."

"Teddy bear?" Thor asks, effortlessly lifting Bruce into his arms.

Finally, Darcy thinks, though she's a little bit annoyed that she doesn't get to hold Bruce anymore.

"He's a little out of it," Steve says. "Ignore everything he says."

Darcy grins and ruffles Bruce's hair. He's going to owe her big time for not telling Tony to start calling him Mr. Snuggles.

* * *

Darcy appoints herself Bruce's caretaker even though the bullet only grazed him, and he really doesn't need as much rest and recovery as she thinks he does. Tony lets her kidnap the scientist, because he thinks it's funny, and he worries that Bruce overworks himself. Darcy escapes as Steve makes a very obvious 'hypocrite' cough, because she doesn't want to be there for the spat or the ensuing sex.

She has a scientist to take care of after all. Bruce is lying down on the couch when she gets there, shirtless, but unfortunately someone has found him pants. He's sleeping, but restlessly, so she carefully slides onto the couch so that his head can rest in her lap. She runs her hands through his curls, fingers gently massaging his scalp, murmuring to him so he knows he's not alone. She likes to think that his breathing gets easier after that.

* * *

"How long was I out for?" Bruce asks, rubbing his eyes.

He's sitting up when Darcy comes in, carefully balancing a bowl of soup in her hands. He realizes he's not a wearing a shirt and he grabs his pillow and covers his chest with it, and Darcy just laughs.

"I've already seen everything," she says. "No need to be shy."

Bruce's blush creeps up his neck into his face, staining his cheeks and even the tips of his ears red. "Everything?"

Darcy grins. "Everything."

Bruce groans. "Couldn't you have lied or something?"

Darcy moves the pillow so she can sit down on his lap. "It's more fun to torment you. And I don't know why you're all embarrassed. I wasn't disappointed."

Bruce makes a strangled, choked sort of noise, and Darcy doesn't think he's ever looked more adorable. She wants to lean in and kiss him, see if she can get him to blush even more, but she'd promised that she'd take care of him, and that meant making sure he was healthy first. There would be plenty of opportunities to kiss him later.

"How's the wound?" she asks, tapping the bandage with her free hand.

"Almost healed," Bruce says, grateful that they've changed subjects, though he's not quite sure why she's sitting on his lap. "Uh, what are you doing?"

Darcy lifts a spoonful of soup and gives him a significant look.

"No way," he says. "You're not feeding me. I have a scratch on my arm. I'm not gravely injured."

"You don't want to mess with me," Darcy says. "I've added talking the Hulk down to my already pretty impressive résumé so you're going to open your mouth and eat."

Bruce opens his mouth, though it's to protest or call for help or something, but Darcy slides the spoon into his mouth, and his eyes go wide, because it's chicken and stars and that's his absolute favorite and how did she know that?

"I also happen to be a mind reader," she says, grinning as she feeds him another spoonful. "You should be very, very afraid of me."


End file.
